人类理解事物的能力独一无二Humans Are Unique in Our Ability to Understand Things
Naval：价值在于知识，而知识存在于观察者和创造者——也就是人——的头脑之中，而不是存在于事物本身。例如，石油如果不知道如何提炼、燃烧、用作燃料，就毫无用处。信息如果没有大脑去接收，也毫无用处。
就算有某个信号向太空广播英语，如果不存在能够理解这种语言是什么、如何运作、由谁发出的生物，那它不过是一串被调制过的电磁频率，没有任何意义。因此，大量的信息——大量的价值——都蕴含在特定的、承载知识的实体之中。
随着科学疆域的扩展，我们走到了一个非常还原论的科学时代：把事物分解成越来越小的碎片，然后试图在此基础上解释一切。科学中有一股逆流，那就是复杂性理论，它讨论涌现特性和更高层级的系统。他们观察的是那些在微观层面混沌而不可预测地运行的系统；但在宏观层面，我们却可以对它们做出某些具有解释力的论断。
人类理解事物的能力是独一无二的。
Naval: The value is in the knowledge, and the knowledge is inside the observer and the creator, in other words, a human. It’s not inside the thing itself. For example, oil is useless unless you know how to refine it, burn it, and use it for combustion. Information is useless unless there’s a brain there to receive it.
There could be a signal broadcasting English into outer space, but if there isn’t a creature capable of understanding what that language is, how it works, and who’s conveying it, then it’s just modulated electromagnetic frequencies that don’t mean anything. So a lot of the information—a lot of the value—is within a particular knowledge-bearing entity.
As the reach of science grows, we have gotten to a very reductive science where we break things down to smaller and smaller pieces. Then we try and explain things on the basis of that. There is a counter-trend in science, complexity theory, where we talk about emergent properties and higher-level systems. They’re looking at systems as they operate chaotically and unpredictably at a micro-level; but at a macro-level we can make certain statements about them that do have explanatory power.
Humans are unique in our capability to understand things.